this was the plan that was responsible for causing the world's worst industrial disaster. had been abandoned in a condition where it had become a source of pollution the most recent study that was done shows that this water pollution and spreading. need to be. in the sea. five hundred dollars. unpunished.

from funds. this is our team of six. billion dollars. successfully. intimidated from selling shows. in russian oil companies have

a fraction of their value. the un the secretary general condemns the u.s. and israel for threatening to attack iran over its nuclear program this comes as a report by the u.n. nuclear watchdog says that the country has doubled production capacity at one of its underground facilities claims rejected by to. and mitt romney accepts the republican party nomination for the u.s. presidency promising to get tough with russia but critics say well these frequent flip flopping on the issues like abortion and health care has already inspired mistrust and his candidacy. and now back to washington for the second part of the big picture that's next right here on our. birthrights conversations of great minds i'm joined by american investigative journalist and author craig unger he's previously worked as the deputy editor of the new york observer and editor in chief of the boston magazine also he's been

a frequent contributor to c.n.n. the new yorker esquire and vanity fair his book house of bush house of saudi is a new york times bestseller and his most recent book boss rove inside karl rove's secret kingdom of our documents the return of karl rove following the disastrous bush administration and is set to hit shelves september fourth karl rove is promising to spend upwards of a half a billion dollars the selection to defeat president obama and progressives around the country so for a glimpse into what's motivating rove and how he works and look at the app if he succeeds craig unger is the man to talk to joins me now from from his home craig welcome to the program. thanks for having me and in new york i should say what drew you to karl rove and cause you decide to write this particular book about this fellow. well i think what was remarkable as if you go back to the zero eight election a lot of people were overwhelmed by the sense of hope and change that obama brought

and the disaster of the bush presidency that is when bush left office he had started two wars that were ongoing rove had been forced out in disgrace really and was a prime suspect in the two biggest scandals of the bush era the u.s. attorney scandal and the valerie plame affair bush's approval rating was twenty two percent and it seemed like there was a huge mandate to enter a new era that bush had been an extreme turn to the right and now we are finally out of that and yet when i realize just a year into obama's term. in early two thousand and ten call roe was coming back he was not simply a creature of the bush family he was far more than that and in his vision of a permanent republican majority began to grow right after the citizens began to be reborn rather writers citizens united decision in early two thousand

and ten yeah and he took that and ran with it with his g.p.s. contraption. you have a brilliant chapter in your book about don siegelman and his story don siegelman i should i should say as a pro personal friend of mine i'm very familiar with what happened with him on my radio show over the last five six years we have been pounding and dogs been on the program many many times i know his daughter dana as well tell tell our viewers about karl rove's role in the first of all what happened and who does the woman was and what karl rove's role was in this will i think it's just a spectacular travesty of justice and the people don't understand. really what the u.s. attorney scandal was was about it's not just that eight or nine u.s. attorneys were fired for not toeing the line of the bush justice department one of the key questions is what about the other u.s.

attorneys what were they doing and the answer is they were prosecuting democrats and there's no more egregious case than that of don siegelman. and in alabama once bush took office it turned out the that karl rove had a friend in it so should named bill canary who is sort of the local karl rove in alabama he ran the gubernatorial campaigns for the republican candidates the senatorial candidate campaigns for the republicans and he married a woman lawyer named laura canary and as soon as bush took office who did they appoint as united states attorney now alabama but laura canary so you had a situation where when and where came up in alabama bill canary again this is this is call rhodes colleague and good friend was in a position where he did run the race for the republican candidate bob riley as it

happened who did become the republican governor and is in alabama and as soon as you let him came around his wife couldn't die the democrat right and i'm certain you can. don siegelman you know and in fact the evening of that election don siegelman was declared the winner and something strange happened in a in a republican controlled. electoral district. exactly that was the election of two thousand and two and one of the wire services that actually declared siegelman the winner. in baldwin county there were both republican and democratic monitors of the election who were there in the board of elections until about midnight at about midnight determined krantz left to give the election was over and an associate of karl rove called bob riley's team and said don't concede don't

concede whatever you do don't concede they held on and loops six thousand votes suddenly disappeared for siegelman only for siegelman disappeared baldwin county and riley ended. winning the governorship and i remember when when don siegelman started complaining about that in the media all the right wing local talk show hosts and basically you know the whole the whole mechanism in alabama went into a bad loser weiner come complainer but then karl rove's best friend wife laura canary prosecuted don siegelman for having appointed to a unpaid hospital oversight panel the same guy that the two previous governors had appointed to that position. why how and why is it that that that don siegelman ended up getting frog marched off to prison and put in solitary confinement for

seven months so he couldn't talk to the press well exactly i mean you know i don't think it's the prettiest part of the american electoral system but it is a commonplace it's standard operating procedure that sometimes candidates successful candidates appoint their campaign donors to various positions and certainly george w. bush did that with over a hundred of his campaign donors who ended up with a point of positions in his administration don siegelman did the same thing but in his case he was prosecuted for bribery and and to me it is quite hard line on september eleventh is scheduled to go back for i believe it's eighty four months a prison sentence and what you see in this bush justice department is selective prosecution and i think one measure of the health of a democracy is how justice is

a portion and when one group of people is chosen and only they are prosecuted then and as i did my research i noticed that the mayor of honolulu was indicted. miami of cleveland and these are stories that if you live here in new york you might shrug and and not think much of about when you see them and if they're even covered in the new york times but i came and put together a string of twelve mayors of major american cities and what did they have been a common. they were all indicted and they were all democrats and i got to over three hundred politicians were indicted this way and seven out of eight of them were democrats and there's just no doubt whatsoever that suggests that democrats are eight as as corrupt as republican in effect in your book you mention how karl rove came over to a table to don siegelman was sitting at this is before the prosecution and you know

just went out of his way to sit down and shake his hand and say something to siegelman and you i don't recall the exact phrase they used in your book but it was something like he wanted to get close to his prey is he really predatory a man. i think there's something very weird about him and he's on some level he is spectacularly disciplined he is very very smart there's no question about it you can assimilate vast amounts of data and spit it out in ways that that form a real strategy he is a great strategist but he loves to go in for the kill and i think he tends to there's certain times when he can't resist it i had a very interesting episode on monday at rock that it was time it's in tampa politico had a breakfast at which karl rove was the guest of honor and the speaker. excuse me

and i rose to get to ask a question and he lit into he knew who i was he lit into me he said there goes under to to launch his book watch and monitor what i'm going to weigh anchor and he started saying that i had accused him of murder and all sorts of things and he did in many ways with strippers and in my book you know it's it's not at all surprising in fact i the one time i met karl rove was eight or nine months ago i was over at fox news to be a guest on and he and i ran into each other as we were both going into the you know into the the main office there and and it was one of those comic kind of things were where each of you reach for the door and you run into each other instead of the door and he just and i didn't realize this karl rove until after it was over as he was walking away i mean it took me a minute to recognize him because here's this kind of

a short pudgy nondescript seemed like you know just an average guy i mean you know and and and yeah but this is a man who has had massive influence over the history of the united states and our politics and continues to and arguably as one of the most powerful men in the world at this moment how did he start. well other to interesting and if you look at the super pacs today and of anything that i frankly think you probably you may have understated the amount of money he's letting together for this election but i went back to the one nine hundred eighty s. and in texas you could see the roots of this strategy he. had been in college republicans which was a the ground which is famously forged enormous number of really. brutal strategies lee atwater came out of that and lee atwater who did the willie horton campaign he ran george h.w.

bush's campaign and he was the campaign manager for call rove the head of college republicans and that's sort of how karl got his start but but he in texas even as late as the eighty's he was not a major figure and that's partly because. the texas republican party was sort of nothing there were powerful conservative democrats in texas in those days john connelly lloyd benson and so forth so the big corporate donors the big business people in texas said well why should we give the republicans we're getting what we want from the democrats and rove found a way around that and he did it by starting political action committees he got on the payroll of philip march and he went to philip morris and the various other big big corporations and he said look you guys face billions and billions of dollars in tort reform losses and damage suit suits and so forth i can

save you that money if you donate a few million to campaign for my candidates we will take over the texas supreme court and he did it was almost entirely liberal democrats and it became entirely to one. you know it's not and it. was in the governor's seat yeah he it's really a remarkable story more conversations with great minds with craig and other hunger right after this break.

more news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images kobold has been seeing on the streets of canada. giant corporations are today.

welcome back to conversations in the great minds of speaking with investigative journalist a new york times best selling author craig unger his new book boss rove inside karl rove secret kingdom of power is due out september fourth let's get back to it craig i'm curious where or what role billionaire ripper murdoch in the fox news. machine played in the rehabilitation of girl wrote those issues grow the role and if you go back. back to the nixon era roger ailes who of course is a chairman of fox news when he was in the nixon administration he put together a proposal for something called g.o.p. t.v. well now they've got it and if you look at the current campaign at one point there were five contenders for the republican nomination who were paid analyst on fox news and of course a six person was call wrote. so as i was watching this i thought well wow karl rove

is wiring two hats he's both a commentator on the one hand the other he is the party boss and i begin to realize no he's not a commentator what you see here is really the behind the scenes fight in the republican party going on on live t.v. and we call rove lashes out at sarah pail and he's saying look i'm the party boss i've got as it turns out ultimately about a billion dollars that i control and you're not getting any of it you're finished you are not going to be the candidate and if you look at the primaries one by one he would take shots at rick perry and herman cain and donald trump. newt gingrich and rick santorum and everyone really mitt romney and it's interesting sarah palin seems to have been terminated from fox's this.

boss rove's doing i think in may well. i don't you know i asked him about his relationship to roger ailes he said that he you know conversations with ailes about it i'm not sure that's true yeah where or where does karl rove go from here what what's here are sense of his future given either a romney victory or be a romney loss but i think it's a win win situation for him and that's why he's the party boss with no in an elected position no term limits ronnie's clearly a flawed candidate i think he does have a chance of winning and if he does rove will be hailed as the genius behind the man who put together this massive amount of money if you put together the billion dollars he has plus i think another eight hundred million or so in the romney campaign that's one point eight billion dollars it's going to be poured into the

battle. around states but then perspective john mccain had about three hundred seventy five million his campaign just four years ago and if romney loses. rove can blame it on the out extremism of the tea party. we'll see who emerges in two thousand and sixteen it could be jeb bush were to reunite with the bush family and then of course i think you will still see the continue to sense of all ron craig we just we just have a minute or so here left is karl rove have a a. foundational philosophy or does he just go where the power is i think it's more about power he is non it is. i talked to roger stone the who's a prominent republican strategist and he said look karl rove is not a real conservative this is crony capitalism it's about getting money and giving

rewards to those who put in the money and winning winning winning and if you look at the big campaign donors road put to get started putting together in the one nine hundred eighty s. a lot of them are still with him there bob perry in texas who's a billionaire no relation to rick perry harold simmons and so forth and they were among the founding donors of american crossroads today it's a remarkable story craig unger thank you so much for being with us tonight and for writing as a brilliant book i've read much of it basra i highly recommend it thank you sir thank you for having me to see this and other conversation of the great lines go to our website at conversations with great minds dot com. the story of their romney is

a story of two americas one they got bailed out we can aspire to the highest levels of power and the other they got sold out and forced into bankruptcy desperation and suicide since he can't talk about his job as governor of massachusetts passing his own version of obamacare mitt romney has to talk about his private sector experience at bain capital fact he devoted a portion of his speech at the r. and c. to bain and i was thirty seven i helped start a small company my partners and i'd been working for a company that was in the business of helping other businesses so some of us had this idea that if we really believed our device was helping companies we should invest in companies we should bet on ourselves and our own advice so we started a new business called bank capital but what romney's leaving out is a tumultuous time in the late one nine hundred eighty s. and early one nine hundred ninety s. when romney's company nearly went bankrupt and in fact would have had it not been

bailed out by the united states government in other words he didn't build it. as tim dickinson and rolling stone uncovered bain capital's parent company bain and company ran into serious financial problems in the late one nine hundred eighty s. and mitt romney was tapped to try to save the company the company owed more than thirty million bucks to a bank that had been taken over by the f.b.i. see the federal deposit insurance corporation after failing again and again to get the company back on track romney decided to play hardball with bain's creditors basically forcing them to write down bain step romney gave everyone a take it or leave it deal take thirty cents on the dollar on every dollar the bain owed owes or he would loot the company divert whatever remaining assets were there toward paying big bonuses then declare bankruptcy and then bain's creditors including our government the f.d.i.c would get nothing that hardball worked the

f.d.i.c agreed to take just a fraction of the money the bane of owed them and forgive the rest of the debt huge bailout for bank so that the i.c. is a government agency a debt right out right off amounted to a multi billion dollar bailout courtesy of you and me the taxpayer banning company survived bain and company went on bain capital went on to make a boatload of money taking over companies loading them with debt while stripping them to the bone offshore in american jobs and pocketing huge profits romney went on to earn more than a third of a billion dollars energy in vain and now he's running for president all thanks to that government bailout again he didn't build but while the one nine hundred eighty s. government bailout of bain secure the american dream for mitt romney the millions of americans who got screwed by wall street during the housing crisis never got bailed out and there's stories reveal

a very different america. here's the story of norman russo who we battled with wells fargo for years to stay in the his home in this home in his home after he was conned into one of those exploding adjustable rate mortgages facing foreclosure and living out his life in an r.v. with his rife reso wasn't bailed out like mitt romney and instead shot himself there's the story of sergeant robert robert bales you may have heard of him he was the american soldier in afghanistan who snapped and went on a killing rampage gunning down seventeen afghan civilians turns out back at home bales' wife was losing a battle to keep the family home from the bank stirrers the day after the rampage the family home was forced to be sold for fifty one thousand dollars less than the bales had paid for sergeant bales didn't get a bailout like mitt romney and he snapped it committed a massacre there's the story of vincent garcia who had bought her home sons excuse

me garcia would bought her home in one thousand nine hundred six and one awards for perfectly landscape law she too was conned into refinancing your mortgage with an adjustable rate loan she fell behind on the payments and could have used a bailout like that romney but she never got the night before she was to be a victim by the bank she put on some music laid on her bed and fired a twenty two caliber bullet through her head there's a story of michael moore a former wall street banker and a rich guy like mitt romney but marin too got caught up in the housing mess and he bought a three and a half million dollar mansion he couldn't afford when the housing market went bust america used to bail out but he didn't get one like mitt romney since he couldn't pay as mortgage anymore and desperation he burned his house down to make a look like an accidental fire and get the insurance money pay it off you do a sloppy job he was busted convicted of arson. is the verdict against him was read

marin took a cyanide tablet and committed suicide right in the courtroom another victim of the foreclosure crisis another american who could have used the bailout like mitt romney got it's hard to calculate just how many americans have suffered suicide by foreclosure like some of the people i just mentioned there's a website called greenspan's body count that tries to keep track of how many americans have committed suicide because of financial hardship because they couldn't get a bailout like mitt romney got currently the death toll stands at two hundred twenty eight of the real number is likely much much higher this is what happens in america when the rich and well connected get bailed out while the rest of us get sold out we're going to hear mitt romney over and over and over again brag about his business achievements and live that he built a business on his own it's not true i mean first he was given millions and now of

before he was born with millions and then when he screwed it up in the company was nearly bankrupt he was given a lifeline a bailout and thanks to that bailout he's running for president today no one does anything alone alone in america we're all in this together and when we do force people to do it alone we leave them behind to face economic disasters on their own without a lifeline and catastrophe often follows just look at what happened to norman rousseau or sergeant bales of a tons of. if only they could have gotten bailed out like mitt romney did and maybe they'd still be here their families and their friends still alive trying to live the american dream. that's the way it is tonight friday august thirty first two thousand and twelve missed any of tonight's show you can now watch it in h deep on hulu at hulu dot com slash the big picture. for more information on the stories

we've covered visit our website to tom hartman dot com free speech dot org and our to dot com also check out our two you tube channels there are links at tom hartman dot com this entire show is also available as a free video podcast on i tunes you can visit tom arbonne dot com to download the audio podcast of our daily three to six radio show and we have a free tom hartman i phone and i pad app at the app store said his feedback on twitter tom underscore arbonne and facebook tom underscore our man on our blogs message boards a telephone comment line at thom hartmann dot com and now as we're watching the republicans try to produce a content free election that is based in the big lies strategy that came out of europe in the one nine hundred thirty s. . it's more important than ever. that we all get out there and participate don't forget them ocracy begins with you get out there get active occupy something tag you're it.